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SOME RECENT 
( OPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 



BY 



QUEEN LOIS SHEPHERD 

B. A. Northwestern University, 1907 
M. A. University of Wisconsin, 1910 



THESIS 

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements 

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 

in Philosophy 



IN 



The Graduate School of the 

University of Illinois 

1915 



SOME RECENT 
CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 



BY 



QUEEN LOIS SHEPHERD 

B. A. Northwestern University, 1907 
M. A. University of Wisconsin, 1910 



THESIS 

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements 

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 

in Philosophy 



IN 

The Graduate School of the 

University of Illinois 

1915 






i I Is | 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Introduction 5 

II. Consciousness from the Point of View of Psychology 6 

III. Consciousness as a Relation 16 

IV. Consciousness as Meaning 22 

V. Consciousness as a Function 27 

VI. Conclusion 34 



INTRODUCTION. 

The nature of consciousness is a leading issue in philosoph- 
ical discussion at the present time. How this question has be- 
come prominent one readily discovers. Epistemology, the sub- 
ject to which modern philosophy has devoted itself, has not been 
fruitful. As a result reflection has turned in the direction of 
the assumptions which gave rise to the question: how is knowl- 
edge possible? Mind is a thing; it exists in independence of 
material things; 'objects of consciousness' are passive, i.e., they 
do not cooperate with the mind in the activity of knowing — 
these propositions, fundamental to conclusions which were 
drawn, once passed unchallenged. At the present time, however, 
each of them is being severely tested and by word of pen, at 
least, openly disavowed. 

A second influence which has been at work is the doctrine 
of evolution. An attitude of mind which views all things under 
the aspect of development and which explains survival on the 
basis of a function served has wrought reconstruction in many 
avenues of thought. It was inevitable that it should finally 
make its attack upon a concept which hinted at a thing that was 
ready-made and too far removed from the things of the earth to 
be taken as serving a function. 

But while the characteristics formerly attributed to con- 
sciousness are acknowledged to be unsatisfactory, substitutes for 
them are now only in the making. What kind of concept this 
period of criticism will develop is an interesting speculation. 
In this essay I propose to present some of the views of conscious- 
ness now in the limelight with the purpose of showing what 
they indicate with reference to the further development of: 
thought. 

5 



II 

CONSCIOUSNESS FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF 
PSYCHOLOGY. 

The psychologist would seem to be of first and greatest aid 
to one who is seeking information about consciousness, for he 
has led us to believe that it is in having consciousness as his 
subject-matter that he finds the differentia of his science. But 
whoever is inclined to turn to this source to learn the nature 
of consciousness should be warned not to hold his hopes too 
high. The statements regarding consciousness made by different 
writers and even by the same writers at different times are so 
diverse that one feels tempted very early in his search to have 
done with psychology for all time. It should be remembered, 
however, that the clue to the solution of a troublesome problem 
often is to be found only by plodding through fields of con- 
fusion. For this reason it is well worth while to study with care 
certain discussions of psychologists which bear upon the question 
we have before us. 

The introduction of Titchener's A Text-book of Psychology 
presents three radically different propositions regarding con- 
sciousness. In the opening pages we are told that the subject- 
matter of psychology is not peculiar to that science. To use the 
writer's own words, there exists "no essential difference between 
the raw materials of physics and the raw materials of psychol- 
ogy. ' n What all science is dealing with is human experience and 
what differentiates the different sciences is simply differences in 
human interests. These assertions bring us to the conclusion 
that the psychologist in studying consciousness is studying ob- 
jects from a special point of view. 

What the point of view of psychology is, we wish to have 
made clear before the discussion moves on. The answer which 
Titchener gives is that the psychologist's interest is in experi- 
ence taken as dependent upon a particular person. But this 
reply is not illuminating. What experience is in its dependent 
aspect we labor in vain to discover. Obviously dependence upon 

1 E. B. Titchener, A Text-book of Psychology, 191 1, p. 6. 

6 



THE POINT OP VIEW OP PSYCHOLOGY 7 

the physical organism cannot be the meaning intended, for 
experience always has this aspect. The following passage sug- 
gests that what marks off dependent experience is its failure to 
lend itself to measurement by fixed standards, i.e., by standards 
which are the same for a variety of experiences: "Physical 
space, which is the space of geometry and astronomy and geol- 
ogy, is constant, always and everywhere the same. Its units is 
one cm., and the cm. has precisely the same value wherever and 
whenever it is applied. Physical time is similarly constant; 
and its constant unit is the one second. Physical mass is con- 
stant; its unit, the one gram, is always and everywhere the 
same. Here we have experience of space, time and mass con- 
sidered as independent of the person who experiences them. 
Change them to the point of view which brings the experiencing 
person into account. The two vertical lines in Fig. 1 are physi- 
cally equal; they measure alike in units of one cm. To you, 
who see them, they are not equal. The hour that you spend in 
the waiting-room of a village station and the hour that you 
spend in watching an amusing play are physically equal; they 
measure alike in units of one second. To you, the one hour goes 
slowly, the other quickly; they are not equal. Take two cir- 
cular cardboard boxes of different diameter (say, 2 cm. and 8 
cm.), and pour sand into them until they both weigh, say, 50 
gr. The two masses are physically equal ; placed on the pans of 
a balance, they will hold the beam level." 2 

However, to take experience in its dependent aspect as 
experience which is too unique to be treated as belonging to any 
common form or forms, is to grant what we should expect Titch- 
ener to be most unwilling to grant. If experience is dependent in 
that sense, then psychology can not claim to be a science. Con- 
sider the following passage : ' ' Every emotion brings with it 
changes in pulse, respiration, volume, involuntary movement and 

muscular strain In fear, for example, the salivary glands 

cease to act, so that mouth and throat become dry ; the body is 
bathed in cold sweat ; there is a tendency to urination and diar- 
rhaea. In the emotion of impotent rage there is often a derange- 
ment of the liver ; in grief, an excessive stimulation of the lachry- 
mal glands." 3 Does not this account indicate that experience, 
even when studied from the point of view of the psychologist, 
lends itself to fixed standards ? Only if we are willing to accuse 

2 Ibid., p. 7. 
^Ibid., p. 484. 



8 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OP CONSCIOUSNESS 

Titchener of being highly inconsistent, then, can we take 'de- 
pendence' to mean failure to meet a fixed standard. 

But there remains another way of interpreting the phrase, 
'dependent upon the experiencing person,' namely, as meaning 
that which exists only when experienced, in contrast with that 
which exists also when not experienced, or with that which in 
the form of a prototype of a copy, at least, exists when not exper- 
ienced. In other words, 'dependence' may be taken to signify 
the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities. The following 
passage lends itself to such an interpretation: "The world of 
physics in which these types of experience are considered as 
independent of the experiencing person, is neither warm nor cold, 
neither dark nor light, neither silent nor noisy. It is only when 
the experiences are considered as dependent upon some person 
that we have warmth and cold, blacks and whites and colours and 
greys, tones and hisses and thuds, and it is these things that are 
subject-matter of psychology." 4 

Shall we conclude, then, that it is not objects common to all 
science which the psychologist studies, after all, but that it is 
rather mental states to which he gives his attention ? No, for not 
many lines in advance of the passage just quoted we are assured 
that it is not qualities separated from the external world in 
which the psychologist is interested. The subject-matter of psy- 
chology and the subject-matter of physiology, Titchener tells 
us, are simply two different aspects of the same world of experi- 
ance. 5 This assertion suggests the familiar 'double aspect' theory 
to which we must now devote some attention. Does it not involve 
a conception of consciousness radically different from either of 
the two conceptions which Titchener has already suggested? 
The statement which one of the supporters of the doctrine pre- 
sents may help us at this point. 

' ' The surface-mass relation of matter offers a better analogy, 
and helps to a clearer understanding of the mind-body relation. 
As data of experience the surface of a body and its mass or 
weight are perceived by two distinct senses. Divide a lump of 
earth or metal into as many parts as you will, your eye perceives 
only the outer surface of the parts — you never see the mass 
within. Heft it, and you feel only the weight — the surface is 
never a datum of muscular perception. Alter the shape as you 
will, the relations of the constituent particles are altered pari 
passu with the change of the surface relations. Mass and sur- 

*Ibid., p. 8. 
5 Ibid., p. 13. 



THE POINT OF VIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY 9 

face change conjointly; they are inseparably bound together; 
they are two radically distinct aspects of the same thing." 6 

This account makes clear that the term 'double' connotates 
things changing concomitantly. But the nature of the twoness 
of the 'aspects' is what we should like to have made clear. In 
the perception of a chair, for example, what are the two 'as- 
pects'? On one side is the nervous system, but what is on the 
other side? An object occupying a different position in space 
than that which the nervous system occupies? The common- 
sense man insists that such is the case, reminding us that when 
one dusts the chair, folds it up, and places it in the corner, it is 
certainly not the nervous system which one dusts, and folds and 
sets away. But Professor Titchener cannot stand for spatial 
twoness without getting into difficulty ; for everything then, the 
mind as well as the nervous system, turns out to be material, 
i. e., space-occupying in character. Therefore, it matters not 
which aspect the psychologist makes the object of his study, 
there is nothing to distinguish him from other scientists who 
study material things. Moreover, if the two aspects are nothing 
more or less than two physical objects which vary together, one 
fails to see any significance in this terminology. The moon and 
the tides, according to this way of reasoning, should also be 
called two aspects of the same thing. 

That it is not a parallelism of physical objects which 'double 
aspect' stands for, the supporters of the doctrine, in fact, take 
pains to emphasize. Titchener asserts that 'double aspect' means 
psychological paralellism 7 ,' and in Warren's article already cited, 
we read : " In the surface-mass relation one aspect of the change 
is perceived by the eye, the other aspect by the muscle sense. 
Similarly, in the neuro-conscious relation one aspect is objective 
— it is perceived from without; the other aspect is subjective — 
it is the conscious experience of the living organism itself. The 
parallelist errs in divorcing the two. 8 

Let us accept the above propositions as a correct presenta- 
tion of the 'double aspect' doctrine. Do we any more nearly ap- 
proach an understanding of what consciousness is ? No, we seem 
rather to have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. They 
do not lead to the conclusion that all is material, but they do 
lead to another conclusion which is equally unacceptable, the 

6 H. C. Warren, "The Mental and the Physical," Psychological Review, 
Vol. XXI, p. 81. 

''Text-book, iqii, p. 13. 
*Ibid., p. 83. 



10 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OP CONSCIOUSNESS 

conclusion, namely, that all is mental. Once grant that what 
we experience is but the 'subjective' aspect of things, and it 
turns out that the nervous system also must be placed in the 
category of 'subjective' aspects, since it also is an object of 
experience. But if both aspects are mental, again we must ask, 
what is the differentia of the subject-matter of psychology? Now 
it would seem that all scientists, unwittingly though it may be, 
are in very truth psychologists. 

And now let us summarize Titchener's discussion: mind is 
identical with the objects which the physicist and the chemist 
study; mind is experience in its dependent aspect, which we 
have found to have only one tenable interpretation, namely, the 
doctrine of 'mental states'; and finally, mind and nervous sys- 
tem are two aspects of one and the same thing, a doctrine for 
which we have failed to find a consistent meaning, but which by 
definition, at least, is different from both of the other views of 
mind which Titchener has presented to us. 

Next let us turn to recent discussions regarding the nature 
of introspection. Nothing serves better than these dis- 
cussions to showthe confusion which reigns in psychology on the 
question of consciousness. Those who advocate the method of 
introspection hold as a corollary the doctrine that consciousness 
has a 'fringe', and when we make inquiries concerning this lat- 
ter doctrine trouble is set brewing. What does the term 'fringe 
of consciousness' mean? The answer given is also in figurative 
language : ' focus ' and ' fringe ' are names for the fact that ' at- 
tentive consciousness' has 'two levels', the one 'clear' and the 
other 'obscure'. 9 Or again, consciousness is likened to a field 
which has "always a central point of which we are momen- 
tarily more vividly conscious than of anything else. Fading 
gradually away from this point into vaguer and vaguer conscious- 
ness, is a margin of objects or ideas of which we are aware in 
a sort of indirect mental vision". 10 

The nature of the 'clearness' and 'vividness,' 'vagueness' 
and ' obscureness ' which is spoken of in the above is puzzling. 
Titchener tells us that the difference between the two levels of 
consciousness is chiefly a matter of sensory clearness, and that a 
process is clear or vivid when it is at its best, when it is making 
the most of itself in experience. But how does a process make 
the most of itself? Perhaps when it easily distinguishes itself 
from other processes. This interpretation would force us to 

9 E. B. Titchener, A Text-book of Psychology, 191 1, p. 276. 
10 J. P. Angell, Psychology, p. 65. 



THE POINT OF VIEW OP PSYCHOLOGY 11 

admit that the buzzing of insects which came pouring into my 
window a moment ago without gaining my attention was present 
in my experience as that which I had difficulty in distinguishing 
from certain other objects of my experience at that moment. But 
if my memory is at all to be trusted this is not a true description 
of my experience. I was pondering over the nature of the 
'fringe.' The indistinctness of the insects' orchestra was far 
removed from my thoughts. 

When finally the question, what is introspection, is raised, 
the confusion which reigns in the ranks of those who assert that 
consciousness has its 'vague' parts is seen at its highest point. 
One side declares that buried within every moment of experi- 
ence is a mine of infinitely valuable material which can and 
should be explored, while the other side asserts that to attempt 
to explore in that mine is futile. 11 Neither side has thought to 
raise the question, with what meaning and with what warrant is 
it asserted that experience has some of its parts hidden from 
view? 

Since this question is left out of account, it is not to be 
wondered at that the advocates of introspection have difficulty 
in making themselves understood. Just what are we doing when 
we introspect? What is the criterion of a good introspective 
report? Titchener replies that when we introspect we attempt 
to reconstitute, reconstruct, an experience that we have lived 
through. In other words, we do not change an experience when 
we use the method of introspection upon it; we merely 'read 
off' what that experience delivered to us. 

And now troublesome questions make their appearance. If 
experience is not changed, why is an introspective report illum- 
inating? And why, if introspection works no change, does one 
require training in introspection in order to discover that a 
a feeling of muscle strain is involved in feeling an emotion? 
And, again, if introspection is merely a matter of 'reading off' 
the contents of one's mind, does not the pursuit of the science of 
psychology, which is said to use introspection as its chief tool, 
become an idle task, being nothing more than a reiteration of 
facts with which one is already familiar ? 

12 Cf. Titchener, "Description vs. Statement of Meaning," "Prolego- 
mena to a Study of Introspection," "The Schema of Introspection," Amer. 
Journal of Psychology, Vol. 23, 1912 ; and Watson, "Psychology as the Be- 
havionist Views it," Psychological Review, Vol. 20, 1913, pp. 158-177 ; also 
Angell, "Behavior as a Category of Psychology," Psychological Review, 
Vol. 20, 1913, pp. 255-270. 



12 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OP CONSCIOUSNESS 

There is a way out of this difficulty. If it is granted that 
experience is merely an appearance of something more real, the 
more real being a complex of mental elements, then it may be 
that in order to tell what an experience is, it is necessary to 
enumerate kinaesthetic processes, affective concomitants, verbal 
ideas, etc. But the assertion that there is a more real experience 
to be dissected, back of experience as it comes to us, is not in 
agreement with Titchener 's statement of the test of a good intro- 
spective report, namely, the ability to cause one's reader to 
relive one's own experience just as it has been lived. 

However, if the aim of introspection is, in truth, to make 
one's reader relive one's own experience, then, certainly there 
are means more effective for gaining that end than that of enum- 
erating a series of feelings. The means used by the novelist and 
dramatist, for example, are obviously much more successful. 

To what conclusion, then, shall we come regarding intro- 
spection? Watson believes that the introspectionist is attempt- 
ing an impossible task. "Two hundred years from now," he 
asserts, "unless the introspective method is discarded, psychol- 
ogy will still be divided on the question as to whether auditory 
sensations have the quality of extension, whether intensity is an 
attribute which can be applied to color, whether there is a differ- 
ence in texture between image and sensation and upon many 
hundreds of others of like character." 12 In view of these facts 
he comes to this conclusion: "What we need to do is to start 
work upon psychology, making behavior, not consciousness, the 
objective point of our attack." 13 

Angell, on the other hand, asserts that the study of behavior, 
valuable as it may be to the psychologist in certain situations, is, 
after all, an indirect method of approach. "Suffice it to say 
that, however introspection be denned and whatever merits and 
defects may be alleged to attach to it as a method for ascertain- 
ing facts, all, so far as I know, are agreed that we are directly 
cognizant of our own experience in a matter different from our 
indirect apprehension of the experience of others. Whatever 
this direct mode of approach may involve under final analysis, 
it may serve for the moment to represent the sort of thing I have 
in mind by introspection." 14 

It seems possible, then, to make it plausible that introspec- 
tion is impossible and also that it is necessary. But on neither 

12 Psychological Review, Vol. XX, 1913, p. 164. 
13 1 bid., p. 175. 
li Ibid., p. 268, note. 



THE POINT OP VIEW OP PSYCHOLOGY 13 

side of the controversy have the representatives stopped to 
consider the question, what is the nature of consciousness, and 
until this question is raised, the discussion will continue in the 
same futile way. 

We shall now pass on to another discussion of consciousness. 
James's chapters on the 'Stream of Thought' and the 'Self im- 
press one as the first and last word on the question of conscious- 
ness. The continuity, the onward movement of thought, a doc- 
trine which these chapters so forcefully present, arouses the con- 
viction that a master hand is at the wheel. Those who have 
declared against the pulverization of thought have, since the 
days of Hume, increased to a mighty army, but for the most part 
this throng has given only negative criticism. When James 
asserted that thought is like a stream, a truth was expressed 
which other students of thought seem to have missed entirely. 
However, a careful reading of this portion of the Principles 
causes one to feel that the writer himself failed to grasp the full 
significance of the gospel he proclaimed. 

Is the stream of which he speaks a mental stream, separate 
and distinct from physical objects? In the early pages of 'The 
Stream of Thought ' one is inclined to believe that it is. In reply 
to an objection to his proposition that thought is sensibly con- 
tinuous, he asserts: "The confusion is between the thoughts, 
themselves, taken as subjective facts, and the things of which 
they are aware. It is natural to make this confusion, but easy to 
avoid it when once put on one's guard. The things are discrete 
and discontinuous; they do pass before us in a train or chain, 
making often explosive appearances and rending each other in 
twain. But their comings and goings and contrasts no more 
break the flow of the thought that thinks them than they break 
the time and the space in which they lie." 15 

Is this an avowal of solipsism? The stream of thought is 
alarmingly separate from 'explosive' and 'disruptive things.' 
How a confusion of 'thoughts' and 'things' is easy to avoid, 
then, if one chooses to argue for such a position, is not clear. Of 
necessity one must step out of the stream of ' thought ' to speak as 
knowingly as James does of the clamor of 'things.' 

While this difficulty is still fresh in the mind of the reader- 
another presents itself. The mental stream seems to be broken-, 
up into discrete sensations. It appears that James, after all, 
has made no advance over the doctrine of 'mental atomism,'" 
other than to attempt to join sensations together by 'a psychic. 

15 The Principles of Psychology, Vol. i, p. 240. 



14 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OP CONSCIOUSNESS 

overtone, suffusion, or fringe'. At this juncture, however, an 
explanation is given. In a foot-note he assures us that it is not 
a solipsistic stream dotted with atoms of sensations for which 
he stands. "The fringe as I use it means nothing like this," 
he tells us, to make clear that it is not a beard, as it were, which 
acts as a connecting link between discrete sensations, "it is a 
part of the object cognized, — substantive qualities and things 
appearing to the mind in a fringe of relations. ' n6 

Consciousness, then, must be a stream of objects. And now 
we face a new difficulty : have objects no knower ? Asa reply to 
this question let us consider the following passage : ' ' The know- 
ing is not immediately known. It is only known in subsequent 
reflection. Instead, then, of the stream of thought being one of 
consciousness, thinking its own existence along with whatever 
else it thinks, it might better be called a stream of Sciousness 
pure and simple. . . . The existness of this thinker would be 
given to us rather as a logical postulate than as that direct inner 
perception of spiritual activity we naturally believe ourselves 
to have." 17 

Again, then/ we must change our conception of conscious- 
ness. It is neither a stream of mental states nor a stream of 
things. No, consciousness is inaccessible to immediate experience. 
"The present moment of consciousness is thus the darkest in 
the whole series. It may feel its own immediate exestence — we 
have all along admitted the possibility of this, hard as it is by 
direct introspection to ascertain the fact — but nothing can be 
known about it till it is dead and gone." 18 The 'passing Thought', 
then, is never known 'in the flesh'. But since there is no break 
from one 'passing Thought' to another it seems necessary to 
have it 'known about after it is dead and gone.' Each succeed- 
ing thought, we are told, knows its predecessor after the manner 
that a person, born fully mature, at the instant of his father's 
death, and inheriting at birth all that the father possessed — if 
we can imagine such a being — knows his father through his 
inheritance. To say the least, this way of being known is exceed- 
ing unusual. 

Three quite different views of consciousness, then, are found 
in James's discussion: consciousness is a stream of thought, 
separate and distinct from things; consciousness is a stream of 

™Ibid., p. 258. 
17 'Ibid., p. 304. 
18 Ibid., p. 341. 



THE POINT OF VIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY 15 

things, or the stream character of things — we can not determine 
which he means ; consciousness is a succession of fleeting, unknown 
thoughts, a procession behind the scenes of experience. 

That the concept of consciousness needs a thorough revi- 
sion, the above discussions make clear. The ambiguity which 
they display is typical of what can be found in countless pages 
of psychology. At one point consciousness is treated as distinctly 
mental, at another it is identified with material things, and at 
still another it is clearly a know-not-what. On this one point 
there is almost unswerving agreement: consciousness is a 'thing', 
rather than a 'relation' or a 'function.' Does this fact furnish 
us the clue to understanding why confusion prevails in psychol- 
ogy? Is it due to a dogged insistence that consciousness must 
be clothed by a category which does not fit it ? On this point we 
shall suspend judgment until the other categories which are 
being applied to consciousness have been tried out. 



Ill 

CONSCIOUSNESS AS A RELATION. 

Among the supporters of realism a conception of conscious- 
ness has developed which differs radically from that which pre- 
vails in psychology. These writers assert that consciousness is 
not to be taken as an end-term but rather as that which ties 
together end-terms. This is to say that consciousness is not a 
thing but a relation. As to the kind of relation it is, various 
descriptions are given. A few of these descriptions will be pre- 
sented in this chapter. 

McGilvary describes consciousness as 'a unique kind of 
togetherness of things. ' And in explanation of ' togetherness ' he 
cites certain analogous cases : ' ' Now things are together with each 
other in all kinds of ways ; they may be together in the same part 
of space or at the same moment of time or even in the same genus 
or family, or order, as when we say that whales belong together 
with land animals and not with fishes." 19 

In a later article, attempting to reach more specific terms, 
he describes consciousness as a relation which joins objects with 
reference to a center, namely, the body. ' ' Like every other rela- 
tion, consciousness, when it obtains among objects, constitutes 
them into a unitary group or complex. Any consciousness com- 
plex, is an 'experience.' Like many other relational complexes, 
e. g., a circle, every experience seems to have a unique center of 
reference. The center of reference of an experience is a material 
body, or rather such parts of that body as enter into that 
experience, together with such immaterial things as penetrate 
that body and are likewise included in that experience, e. g., 
organic sensations, emotions, etc." 20 

It is a 'peculiar pattern' which objects form when joined by 
the relation consciousness, according to Perry's account. But 
the following passage seems to indicate that there is no funda- 
mental difference between 'togetherness' and 'pattern': "It is 

19 "Experience and Its Inner Duplicity," Journal of Philosophy, Psy- 
chology and Sc. Methods, Vol. VI, 1909, p. 227. 

20 "The Relation of Consciousness and Object in Sense-Perception," 
Philosophical Review, Vol. XXI, 1912, p. 163. 

16 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS A RELATION 17 

with respect to their grouping and interrelation that the elements 
of mental content exhibit any peculiarity. When my attention 
is directed to this I find that mental contents, as compared, for 
example, with physical nature, possess a characteristic fragmen- 
tariness. Not all of physical nature, nor of any given natural 
body, is in my mind, but the peculiar abstract that is in my 
mind does not exactly coincide with the particular abstract that 
is in my neighbor 's mind. Furthermore, the fragments of nature 
that find their way into my mind acquire thereby a peculiar inter- 
relation and compose a peculiar pattern." 21 

In two other accounts, Holt's and Marvin's, ' cross-section' 
is used to express the relationship of objects which are in con- 
sciousness. "We have seen that the phenomena of response", to 
quote from Holt, "defines a cross-section of the environment 
without, which is a neutral manifold. Now this neutral cross- 
section outside of the nervous system, and composed of the 
neutral elements of physical and nonphysical objects to which 
the nervous system is responding by some specific response, — 
this neutral cross-section, I submit, coincides exactly with the 
list of objects of which we say that we are conscious. This 
neutral cross-section as defined by the specific reaction of reflex- 
arcs is the psychic realm: it is the manifold of our sensations, 
perceptions and ideas : — it is consciousness. ' ' 22 

And Marvin speaks of consciousness in very similar terms. 
1 ' Consciousness has been compared to a search light which illum- 
inates, or selects out of a world of objects, certain entities, but in 
so illuminating or selecting it neither creates them nor takes them 
out of their environment. That is, a field of consciousness is a 
certain cross-section, a certain collection of entities, belonging to 
the universe of subsistent entities and definable as a group by its 
peculiar relation to oar bodily reactions." 23 

Let us grant, then, that consciousness forms objects into a 
unique group. What we must next determine is in what 
the uniqueness of its group consists. McGilvary admits that 
"things are together in all kinds of ways," and it must also be 
acknowledged that things form 'patterns' and 'cross-sections' 
of various kinds. The importance, therefore, of learning from 
the realists the distinctive trait of the conscious relational com- 
plex, if the identification of consciousness with a form of rela- 
tion is to have any meaning for us, is evident. 

21 R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 277. 
22 E. B. Holt, The Concept of Consciousness, p. 182. 
23 W. T. Marvin, First Book of Metaphysics, p. 263. 



18 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

McGilvary, it will be recalled, lays emphasis upon the fact 
that the material body is the center of reference of the 'group' 
or 'complex' which is made by consciousness. But other rela- 
tions also have the material body as the center of reference. 
For example, when two objects are equidistant from the body, 
the latter is the center of reference of the relation in which these 
objects stand to one another. Evidently, then, for the body to be 
the center of reference for the relation of consciousness is differ- 
ent from its being the center in other relations. The following 
passage seems to indicate that such is the case : ' ' The spatial and 
temporal centers of experience are not merely spatial and tem- 
poral centers; they are spatial and temporal centers of a rela- 
tional complex which has a distinctive character given to it by 
the fact that it is a conscious relational complex." 24 In saying 
this, however, McGilvary does nothing more than name a diffi- 
culty, for what the 'distinctive character' is which a relational 
complex gains by being a 'conscious' relational complex he does 
not tell us. 

The other realists whom we are considering also name the 
body as the pivot' upon which the relation of consciousness turns. 
For them it is the responses of the body which select the objects 
which constitute a conscious complex. Perry defines conscious- 
ness as " a selective response to a pre-existing and independently 
existing environment." 25 While Holt, as already stated, asserts 
that the 'cross-section' is composed of "objects to which the nerv- 
ous system is responding by some specific response. ' ' And Mar- 
vin tells us that the ' group ' is definable by its peculiar relation to 
our bodily reactions. 

But bodily response, it may readily be seen, does not fur- 
nish a distinctive principle of grouping for the conscious rela- 
tional complex. In innumerable instances the body responds to 
things which are not in consciousness. Or, to state the matter in 
another way, if bodily response determines what is related by 
consciousness, there is no difference between reflex and so-called 
'conscious' behavior. 

Perry, apparently for the sake of meeting the difficulty just 
stated, qualifies bodily response in taking it as the principle of 
grouping of the conscious complex. "Content of mind must be 
defined," he asserts, "as that portion of the surrounding environ- 
ment which is taken into account of by the organism in serving 
its interests, the nervous system, physiologically regarded, being 

^Philosophical Review, Vol. XXI, 1912, p. 164. 
26 Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 322. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS A RELATION 19 

the mechanism which is employed. ' ' 2C And a few lines in advance 
we read the following : " As mind appears in nature and society, 
it consists primarily in interested behavior. ' ' 

But is not this another case of being furnished a distinction 
without being given a difference? Suppose that we grant that 
when consciousness is present the organism serves its interests. 
The organism serves its interests also when consciousness is not 
present. Is not digestion, for example, an instance of response 
which serves the interests of the organism? The objection may 
be raised that we are giving 'interest' a meaning which Perry 
does not intend to express. But this criticism is not warranted. 
Perry himself tells us in the following passage that he is using 
'interest' in its broader sense: "In the first place, a mind is a 
complex so organized as to act desiderately or interestedly. I 
mean here to indicate that character which distinguishes the liv- 
ing organism, having originally the instinct of self-preservation, 
and acquiring in the course of its development a variety of spe- 
cial interests. I use the term 'interest' primarily in its biological 
rather than in its psychological sense." 27 

Bodily response, then, whether qualified or unqualified, seems 
not to furnish the distinctive principle of the conscious complex. 
Can it be, then, that it is the environment, rather than the 
behavior of the body, which reveals the unique 'pattern' or 
'grouping' of consciousness? Does bodily response merely fur- 
nish a clue for finding the 'pattern' in the environment? The 
following passage from Perry's account easily lends itself to 
such an interpretation : " A subjective manifold will be any mani- 
fold whose inclusion and arrangement of contents can be attrib- 
uted to the order and range of some particular organism's 
response. The number of the planets, for example, and their 
relative distances from the sun, cannot be so accounted for ; but 
the number of planets which I have seen, the temporal order in 
which I have seen them, and their apparent distances, can be so 
accounted for." 28 

When he cites 'perspective' or 'point of view' as the clearest 
instance of the 'subjective manifold' we are the more inclined to 
believe that the 'pattern' is to be looked for as something which 
the environment takes on when the body responds to it. Let us 
take perspective under our consideration, then, and see if we 
can discover the 'pattern' which constitutes the 'subjective mani- 

2e Ibid., p. 300. 

21 Ibid., pp. 303-304. 

28 Ibid. } p. 323. 



20 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

fold.' When I look down the avenue houses, trees and walks 
spread out from my body in one manner, and when I walk the 
length of the avenue they group themselves in another manner, 
and when I view the avenue from my window they group them- 
selves in still another manner. Now by comparing these differ- 
ent experiences of the avenue I come to know that things have a 
perspective, that is, that they group themselves in different ways 
relative to the different positions which my body, in reacting to 
them, holds. But since each of these 'manifolds', and any other 
which I might consider, can be ' attributed to the order and range 
of some particular organism's response', they must all be 'sub- 
jective manifolds'. In other words, when we return to the envir- 
onment to find what constitutes a 'subjective manifold', 'pattern', 
or 'cross-section', we must inevitably fail, for it is not possible 
to contrast the environment when possessing the 'subjective 
manifold' with the environment when robbed of that manifold. 
Therefore, though we may experience 'manifolds', 'patterns' and 
'cross-sections' in plenty, we have no way of determining which 
of them is made by the relation consciousness and which is not. 

This conclusion, then, seems to be necessary : bodily behavior, 
whether it is taken as directly indicating the grouping of con- 
sciousness or as indirectly indicating that grouping, that is, as 
furnshing the clue for finding the grouping in the environment, 
fails to furnish a distinctive characteristic for the conscious rela- 
tional complex. Nor is this the only obstacle which stands in the 
way of asserting, to state the matter in Holt's terms, that the 
cross-section which the responses of the organism makes "coin- 
cides exactly with the list of objects of which we say that we are 
conscious." To say that we respond to 'objects of consciousness ' 
is wholly arbitrary. If I were to make up a group of things on 
the basis of the responses of the body in the case of any given 
perception — the perception of my room, for example, — I should 
have a summary of chemical-physical effects of the stimulation 
of nerve endings, it would seem, rather than a list which read — 
' desk, books, pen, paper. ' If I insist upon going back of the last 
step in the series of conditions which led up to the responses of 
my body there is no more reason why I should stop at desks and 
books than at cabinet makers, authors of the books, or any other 
of the conditions which were causes of these objects being in my 
room. 

To this objection to response as a principle of the grouping 
of consciousness, Marvin gives the following answer: "In the 
blind reflex we do react to a stimulus (the chemical or physical 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS A RELATION 21 

effect an entity may have upon the neural afferent end-organs), 

but not the object, its qualities and relations Whereas 

in the conscious reaction, things, their qualities and their rela- 
tions determine the organism 's reactions. ' ' 29 

But how can we distinguish reaction to an 'object' from 
reactionary to a 'stimulus'? "True," Marvin replies, "it is 
sometimes very difficult to ascertain what is the controller of a 
reaction, for sometimes the two types of reaction appear to be 
identical. But our only method of ascertaining is to eliminate 
experimentally, as in experimenting with animals, one thing 
after another, until we do succeed in ascertaining." 

The policy of ' watchful waiting, ' however, can avail us noth- 
ing, if we do not know what we are waiting for. But finally 
Marvin tells us what we are waiting f or : ' ' If we could show that 
color as color, or some relation between a color and things 
implied by color (e. g., a red flag as a sign of danger) controlled 
the reaction, we should have to call it conscious." 

What the nature of a 'color as color' and of a 'red which 
serves for a sign of danger' is, however, he does not feel called 
upon to explain. To assume that the nature of the qualities and 
meaning of objects is so well understood as to serve as an explan- 
ation of consciousness is to beg the question at issue. Marvin, 
it would seem, should not need to be reminded of this fact. If 
he was assured at the outset of his discussion of consciousness 
that 'things owe neither their being nor their nature to being 
experienced,' 30 then it is difficult to understand why he should 
have felt called upon to write so many pages to prove that con- 
sciousness is an external relation. 

Marvin, then, like the other realists, has failed to make 
clear the distinctive trait of consciousness. However, he seems to 
have stated correctly the problem which consciousness presents 
us. When consciousness is present, behavior, it is true, is 
guided by what things mean — which seems to be what Marvin 
means by 'response to objects' — and it is not thus guided when 
consciousness is absent. This is to say that to know what consci- 
ousness is it is necessary to know what meaning is. Whether one 
can take this stand without calling the realistic descriptions of 
consciousness false, is doubtful. What has been said concerning 
'togetherness,' 'patterns' and 'cross-sections' suggests a category 
entirely different from that of meaning. 

29 First Book of Metaphysics, pp. 261-262. (Italics mine.) 
30 In Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 315, Perry gives this defi- 
nition of the realistic theory of "independence". 



IV 

CONSCIOUSNESS AS MEANING. 

A conception of consciousness which agrees in part with that 
of the realists has been presented by Woodbridge. Consciousness, 
like time and space, he asserts, "is a distinction in the existence 
of different things together"; 31 it is "a kind of continuum of 
objects"; 32 and it is not a thing, but a relation between things. 33 

The distinctive character of the form of continuity or con- 
nection it constitutes is stated in the following passage : ' ' In this 
form (i. e., in consciousness) they (i. e., objects) become grouped 
and systematized in a manner quite different from their grouping 
in any other form. They become representative of each other. 
Note that it is of each other that they become representative but 
not of anything esle. They are not ideas which represent things, 
or phenomena which represent noumena or things in the body 
which represent things outside, or states of consciousness which 
represent an external world. It is each other that they represent, 
as bread represents nourishment. ' ' 34 

Consciousness, in short, as Woodbridge elsewhere states it, 
is the relation of meaning. 35 Therefore, while Woodbridge is in 
agreement with the realists to the extent of calling consciousness 
a relation, he also differs from them in a very fundamental point. 
Marvin, as we have noticed, seems to scent a connection between 
consciousness and meaning, but neither he nor any other of the 
realists shows an inclination to identify consciousness with mean- 
ing. We are not able to determine the exact nature of the rela- 
tion with which the realists identify consciousness. However, 
their insistence that the responses of the body tell the story of the 

31 Joumal of Philosophy, Psychology and Sc. Methods, Vol. II, 1905, 
p. 120. 

32 Ibid., p. 121. 

33 Studies in Philosophy and Psychology by former students of Charles 
Edward Garmen, p. 159. 

3 * Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Sc. Methods, Vol. II, 1905, 
p. 121. 

^Studies in Philosophy and Psychology by former students of Charles 
Edward Garmen, p. 160. 

22 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS MEANING 23 

relation or grouping leads us to believe that they have in mind a 
relation which is quite different from the psychic relation of 
meaning. 

However, Woodbridge has furnished only the beginning of 
an exposition of the nature of consciousness. The reader is left 
to discover for himself whether it is meaning in its broader or 
in its narrower sense that is to be designated as consciousness. 
Sometimes a thing and its meaning are experienced in a relation 
of contrast. This unique form of experience is characteristic of 
problematic situations. I hear in an adjoining room a peculiar 
scratching. One instant it means 'a mouse,' the next it means 
'the cleaning boy at work,' and still later it means 'the flapping of 
a window curtain.' 'Mouse,' 'cleaning-boy' and 'flapping-of -cur- 
tain', each in its turn, stands apart from the noise that 
I hear in a manner which seems best described by Wood- 
bridge's statement that "they become representative of each 
other. . . . and note that it is of each other that they are rep- 
resentative but not of anything else." What the noise means — 
let us say 'scratching-of -mouse' — is experienced as well as the 
noise. The noise is experienced as symbolizing, representing, 
while ' scratching-of -mouse ' is experienced as that which is sym- 
bolized or represented. 

Now it is meaning as just described with which Woodbridge 's 
account of the relation of consciousness more clearly agrees. 
But clearly consciousness cannot be identified with this form of 
meaning. In innumerable instances objects are 'in consciousness' 
without standing in the relation of symbol and symbolized. 

Perry interprets Woodbridge as identifying conscious with 
meaning in this narrower sense and as having failed, therefore, 
to give a satisfactory account of consciousness. "Meaning", to 
quote from Perry's criticism, "would seem to be the relation 
characteric of discursive consciousness, rather than of conscious- 
ness in general. As respects such a general type of relationship, 
the results (i. e., of those who state that consciousness is mean- 
ing) are on the whole negative." 36 

Let us turn our attention, then, to the other meaning of 
'meaning' and determine whether consciousness can be identified 
with it. If, when I hear the scratching, I jump upon a chair or 
arm myself with some implement suitable for warfare on mice, 
even though I am not thinking of the scratching in any such sym- 
bolic fashion as above described, we should say that the scratch- 
ing has meaning for me. But what is the nature of the mean- 

36 Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 278. 



24 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

ing in this case ? It is a matter of certain of the consequences of 
the scratching becoming present fact. I experience the scratch- 
ing as that which will bring a mouse across my path, or simply 
as that which will bring disagreeable consequences. In the same 
manner a stove from which one is too far distant to feel its heat 
may look 'hot', or an apple which is not yet being eaten may look 
'delicious'. In this way what is yet to be becomes present fact. 
The stove is experienced as 'that which will burn' as certainly 
as it experienced as 'large' and 'black', and the apple is experi- 
enced as 'that which will be delicious', as surely as it is experi- 
enced as 'round' and 'red'. Meaning, then, we may surmise, is a 
matter of the future becoming a present quality of an object. 

If we interpret meaning in this fashion, it undoubtedly 
acquires a much larger scope. But is meaning, even when thus 
interpreted, sufficient to cover all the facts? Can we say that 
the future consequences of objects appear in every case in which 
objects are in consciousness? If not, then again we must say 
that meaning is too narrow in its application to be called con- 
sciousness. 

Let us consider the so-called simple qualities of objects. I 
may be thinking of the largeness of the stove, or the roundness 
of the apple, or the loudness of the scratching. Does the future 
become present fact in these cases? "When I consult my experi- 
ence I do not find that it does. If the future is in some man- 
ner smuggled in with every quality of an object, it is not so 
obvious a fact that those who wish to identify consciousness with 
the future-referring qualities of objects may feel themselves 
under no obligation to tell us how it is done. 

Besides we have been told by Woodbridge that consciousness 
is a relation. If this is true, it is difficult to understand how it 
can be identified with meaning, in the sense of the term we are 
now considering. In the situation in which 'scratching' and 
'mouse' are experienced as standing apart, the one representing 
the other, meaning is well described when called a relation. But 
in the case of the second form of meaning, the thing and its mean- 
ing are telescoped, as it were. ' Will-bring-a-mouse ' forms the 
very woof and web of the scratching. A relation presupposes 
end-terms. But what constitute the end-terms in the present 
case ? Until this question is answered we are justified in assert- 
ing that the propositions, consciousness is a relation and con- 
sciousnessness is meaning, in its wider sense, are incompatible. 

And from another angle of approach also the lack of agree- 
ment between "Woodbridge 's conception of consciousness and 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS MEANING 25 

meaning in its second form can be shown. The additive character 
of consciousness he is careful to emphasize. He tells us in unmis- 
takable terms in the following paragraph that consciousness and 
object are separate and distinct: "The objects of consciousness 
may be as varied and as variable as you please. They may be 
men and trees, reds and what we call mere ideas, present facts 
and remembered happenings, reasonings and discussions, pains, 
pleasures, emotions and volitions ; they may even constitute what 
we call the self; but all, without exception, stand out as the 
objects of which there is consciousness, but never as the conscious- 
ness itself. Just as objects in the light are not the light, so 
objects in consciousness are not the consciousness. There is thus 
a distinction between consciousness and its objects." 37 

In fact, consciousness not only is distinguishable but also 
works no change in the objects to which it is joined. "The fact, 
therefore, that knowledge of what objects are depends on the fact 
that they are in consciousness, in no way determines the nature of 
objects. We may say, consequently, that the peculiar form of 
connection or continuity which consciousness constitutes between 
objects does not affect their nature, but simply makes them known 
or knowable, and known with all their variety of distinctions 
from a thing to a thought. ' ' 38 

But it is not at all obvious that such a separateness can be 
asserted of consciousness, if it is identified with the second form 
of meaning. In the first place, meaning in this form, as we have 
already noticed, is a quality of objects, their way of mirroring 
the future, rather than something separate and distinct from 
objects. And in the second place, meaning in this form can 
scarcely be said to have no effect upon the character of the object 
to which it is joined. It seems rather to be the very bone of its 
bone, flesh of its flesh. Take the 'will-burn' quality of the stove. 
Does it stand on its own bottom, as it were, independent of the 
largeness and blackness of the stove ? By no means. These qual- 
ities have a different 'feel' to them when they begin to foretell 
consequences in the way of burning. Such, at least, is the revela- 
tion which the writer's own experience makes. And if evidence, 
other than what one seems to experience, is desired to show how 
meaning permeates the qualities with which it is present, con- 
sider the failure which befalls us when we attempt to imagine 
what a given object would be like if its meaning were abstracted. 

37 'Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Sc. Methods, Vol. II, 1905, 
p. 119. 

ss Ibid., p. 122. 



26 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

Take away the meaning and the object goes also. 

We may conclude, then, that Woodbridge's identification of 
consciousness with meaning raises more problems than it solves. 
Is meaning in any form general enough to be called conscious- 
ness? If consciousness is meaning, is it a relation? Can mean- 
ing be treated as merely additive in character ? These are trou- 
blesome questions, and the answers to them, if discovered, may 
show that Woodbridge at best sees the problem as in a glass 
darkly. However, in suggesting such an approach to conscious- 
ness as he does, namely, a study of the meaning of things, he 
bids fair to have made a valuable contribution to the problem 
of consciousness. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS A FUNCTION. 

That problems of a serious nature seem to be raised by- 
identifying consciousness and meaning, is asserted in certain 
quarters to be due to the fact that too much has been taken for 
granted regarding the nature both of consciousness and of mean- 
ing. A careful study of the former, it is claimed, reveals the 
fact that to it can be applied the concept neither of a thing nor 
of a relation ; it is rather to be taken as a function which things 
perform. And meaning, also, it is found, is a function which 
things perform, and the same function, moreover, which makes 
of things 'objects of consciousness'. 

The nature of this function, which is called consciousness, 
Dewey presents through an analysis of the unique form of stim- 
ulus to which the body responds when consciousness is present. 39 
It is a stimulus which wins its title at the cost of an extended 
'uprising' in the nervous system. "This act (i. e., perception) 
is as genuinely motor as eating, walking, driving a nail, or firing 
combustibles, and involves a like change in the environment upon 
which it takes effect. . . . The motor response is directed to 
moving the sense-organs so as to secure and perfect a stimulus for 
a complete organic readjustment — an attitude of the organism as 
a whole. . . . Let us suppose the disturbance reaches the brain by 
way of the visual organ. If directly discharged back to the 
motor apparatus of the eye this results not in a perception, but 
in an eye-movement. But simultaneously with this reaction 
there is also a dispersal into the areas connected with tasting, 
handling, touching. Each of these structures also initiates an 
incidental reflex discharge. But this is not all; there is also a 
cross-discharge between these cortical centers. No one of these 
partial discharges can become complete, and so dictate, as it were, 
the total direction of organic activity until it has been co-ordi- 
nated with the others. The fulfillment of, say, eating, depends 
upon a prior act of handling; this upon one of reaching, anc| 

39 "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," Psychological Review^ 
Vol. Ill, 1896, pp. 357-370, and "Perception and Organic Action," Journal 
of Philosophy, Psychology and Sc. Methods, Vol. IX, 1912, pp. 645-668. 

27 



28 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

this upon one of seeing ; while the act of seeing necessary to stim- 
ulate the others to appropriate execution can not occur save as it, 
in turn, is duly stimulated by the other tendencies to action. 
Here is a state of inhibition. The various tendencies wait upon 
one another and they also get in one another 's way. The sensori- 
motor apparatus provides not only the conditions of this circle, 
but also the way out of it. ' ' 40 

Let us consider a specific case, the child and the candle, for 
example. The candle arouses a variety of responses. Head and 
eyes tend to adjust themselves to it; the hand makes an incipi- 
ent movement toward it; and at the same time, if the child has 
had the experience of being burned, there is a tendency on the 
part of the body to protect itself against the candle. Obviously, 
then, the responses which the candle arouses get in the way of 
one another. The result is that no overt response is made for a 
time. Nor is the candle 'seen', until order is brought out of this 
chaos. Then there is a joint coming into being of candle-stim- 
ulus and response. The series, stimulus-seeing-response, which 
has been preached for so long a time, turns out to be a pure fic- 
tion. ' Seeing', instead of being a step between stimulus and 
response in a temporal series, is a relation which holds between 
two synchronously existing things. 41 

"In response to an optical stimulus, for example," as Bode 
states the situation, "the eyes may be focused for the act of 
looking or they may be closed as a protection against danger. 
There is, to begin with, no adequate stimulus at all. The process 
of organization is as much a process of securing a stimulus as it 
is a process of securing response. "What is needed is a stimulus 
that will give direction to all the partial responses and not merely 
to the first of a series. And yet the responses that enter into the 
total act come in a serial order. To be adequate, therefore, the 
stimulus must take account of both the earlier and the later 
stages of the response by evoking the first stage as a preliminary 
to the second. The stimulus is evidence that a response has been 
attained, but attained with reference to the response of the next 
moment. ' ' 42 

^Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Sc. Methods, Vol. IX, 1912, 
jl666. 

41 C. Judson Herrick, "Some Reflections on the Origin and Significance 
of the Cerebral Cortex," Journal of Animal Behavior, Vol. Ill, pp. 222- 
236. 

42 B. H. Bode, "The Psychological Doctrine of Focus and Margin,'" 
Philosophical Review, Vol. XXIII, 1914, p. 403. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS A FUNCTION 29 

The closing sentence of this account names the really signi- 
ficant trait of the ' conscious ' stimulus, which is later developed at 
length, namely, that ' ' it controls the progress of the response by 
reflecting or prefiguring in its present constitution the responses 
that are yet to follow." When finally the candle succeeds in 
calling out 'seeing', to return to the illustration used above, it is 
not over the eyes only that it exercises control. Incipient 
responses in the form of reaching and grasping are also aroused, 
for the candle mirrors what it is going to be when it is reached 
for and grasped even at the time that it is seen only. The child 
will tell us, for example, that the candle looks 'near' and 'soft' 
and 'hot'. 

Then as the suppressed responses are each in turn carried 
out the candle changes in such a manner as to present, continu- 
ally, new ends or aims to the body. When the child succeeds 
in grasping it, it becomes an object to be carried cautiously to the 
mantle, and when it has been placed on the mantle it calls forth 
a Christmas carol. In a word, where consciousness is present the 
stimulus is greedy; it works for more and more of a purchase 
upon the body. Every action called forth becomes the means to 
a further action. When the candle is looked at the fingers are 
set tingling, and when grasped the construction of an altar 
and of a song is started. 

It is clear, then, that the relation between stimulus and 
response, when consciousness is present, is quite different from 
that of causation, the relation which holds when action is reflex. 
Let A represent stimulation by candle and B response of the 
physical organism. A, we have observed, does not precede B, 
as in the case of the discharge of a gun the pulling of the trigger 
precedes, but is simultaneous with B. And in another respect 
also A is unlike the A in a causal series ; not simply by its pres- 
ent qualities but also by promises of what it is going to be it lures 
on the responses of the body. For this non-mechanical relation, 
different from the connection found between things anywhere 
else in nature, a new name is needed. For lack of a better termin- 
ology let us call it, for the present, 'stimulus-response.' 

Consciousness, we may conclude, therefore, if the writer has 
correctly interpreted Dewey and Bode, is a case of objects con- 
trolling the body with reference to the future. And if this con- 
ception of consciousness is tenable, is it not also true that con- 
sciousness is meaning? Meaning in its broader sense, we have 
noticed, is the future in the role of a present quality of an object. 



30 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OP CONSCIOUSNESS 

And, according to the doctrine now under our consideration, 
does not every object which is 'in consciousness' give evidence, 
by the unique control which it exercises over the body, that it 
contains the future within itself? The child may or may not 
have in mind the idea, "This candle will burn me, if I am not 
careful", in order for the candle to mean "will burn" to him. 
After he has been burned by a candle, the future to this extent, 
at least, invariably comes in: the candle has that unique quale 
which excites the body to protect itself from being burned. 

Even the simple qualities of objects, if functionalism is ten- 
able, possess meaning. Common sense denies this proposition. 
However, when one traces out the steps in the development of 
discrimination, its truth bcomes evident. From such a study 
one discovers that simple qualities are as a matter of fact any- 
thing but simple; they like all other 'objects of consciousness 5 " 
control, with reference to the future which they mirror within 
themselves, highly involved systems of response. 

Life in its beginning is, as James says, "one great, bloom- 
ing, buzzing confusion." And out of this confusion things 
emerge only gradually. Of children it can truly be said that 
having eyes they see not. It is noticeable that differences with 
respect to the size, number and color of objects which are unmis- 
takable to the adult, escape them completely. The ability to dis- 
criminate between things awaits the building up and organizing 
of groups of bodily reactions. And simple qualities instead of 
being the bricks out of which other qualities are made, are among 
the last differences to make their appearance. It is wholes, 
relatively unanalyzed, which are the first to emerge. A ball 
which has been a visual and then a tactual stimulus to a child 
becomes recognized, when for the second time his eyes are turned 
upon it, as a thing which has a 'feel' to it. No familiarity of 
detail, it must be admitted, attends this early act of recognition. 
However, this fact does not hinder it from being a case of recog- 
nition. It is analogous to a type of experience which is common 
enough in later life. The writer, for example, easily recognizes 
the window of her office, but if asked to state whether the 
window is third or fourth from the end of the building would be 
be unable to answer. 

Further development in discrimination is brought about by 
the training which error furnishes. If the child mistakes one 
of his red blocks for his red ball, his adjustment for the latter 
object is thrown out of gear, with the result that the ball on a 
subsequent occasion calls out conflicting responses, i. e., re- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS A FUNCTION 31 

sponses to two different shapes. Out of this struggle grows a 
certain wariness as regards redness. But this is not to say that 
redness is now perceived as such. It has not yet separated itself 
from hardness, agreeableness, or a variety of other qualities. A 
series of corrective experiences, however, finally brings about 
these other separations, and then red comes to be seen as red. 

In this manner complicated systems of responses are gradu- 
ally and unceasingly built up. The process of association, which 
we found to be the first step in discrimination, is continually in 
operation. Whatever has been previously experienced in con- 
nection with a given object tends to reappear on the slightest 
provocation and in addition many things which, though never 
associated with it directly, have become joined to it through asso- 
ciation by similarity. The perception of the simple quality red, 
then, summarizes a long history. It involves a system of re- 
sponses which date far into the past. And it is a system, more- 
over, which is constantly being reorganized, for the second step 
in discrimination, i. e., correction through error, is also again 
and again repeated through a lifetime. Consider, for example, 
the complete reorganization which occurs in the case of the 
simple quality 'red' after it has made its appearance in such a 
situation as a death-strewn battle-field. The ' going out' to 
something that is pleasing is replaced, or better, held in check, 
by an attitude of abhorrence. And changes in perception of this 
kind are common occurrences of our lives. 

Facts of the kind just considered remove all doubt as to the 
justification of asserting universally of the things of experience, 
yes, even of simple qualities, the function of controlling the 
body with reference to the future. The only question which re- 
mains, therefore, as regards the problem we have before us, is 
whether meaning can be identified with this universally-present 
function of things ' in consciousness. ' The writer has interpreted 
meaning in its wider sense as identical with this function. Can 
this interpretation be accepted? 

Meaning, as we have already observed, has a habit of cling- 
ing to the qualities with which it occurs. The largeness and the 
blackness of the stove, to return to a former illustration, can 
be marked off from one another. We have no difficulty in at- 
tending to one to the neglect of the other. But when we attempt 
to pin meaning down, after the same fashion, we invariably meet 
with failure. How can this fact be explained? 

Before we attempt to answer this question another fact con- 
cerning meaning needs to be considered. Meaning is not an 



32 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

ethereal stuff, a something distinctly different from other things 
which come into our experience. The ease with which 'fact' and 
'meaning' change places with one another, that which is 'fact' in 
one situation being 'meaning' in another, and vice versa, gives 
evidence of the truth of this assertion. In the case we have been 
considering 'hot' is what the stove means, but 'hot' sometimes 
presents itself as so much immediate fact. The 'fact' that the 
stove is 'hot', for example, may mean that dinner will soon be 
under way. Or 'hot' may mean, if perceived in a dark room, 
that something 'large' and 'black' is present. The problem 
which we face, then, is: when is a thing 'fact' and when, is it 
* meaning'? 

Again we must take our clue from behavior. If I am cold 
the sight of the stove starts me in its direction, with frost-nipped 
fingers extended toward it ; if the preparation of a meal devolves 
upon me, seeing the stove sets me to cooking; if I am absorbed 
in the question of household expenses, calculations regarding the 
cost of fuel are set in operation by my seeing the stove. Now 
in each of these situations we should say that the stove has a dif- 
fent meaning. ,Each of them brings a different attribute or 
quality of the stove into the foreground. At one time it is the 
fact that the stove furnishes heat ; at another that it will cook a 
meal ; at still another that it is an item of expense. Now it is the 
manner in which each of these situations brings a different 
quality into the foreground which should be carefully studied. 
Every situation involves a new organization of responses, for 
the responses to the new object met with must be adjusted to the 
other activities that are going on at the time. What happens, 
then, when an object 'catches our attention', as we say, is that 
upon it falls the task of furnishing the suggestion or cue for the 
next adaptation. By virtue of performing this function an 
object becomes a 'fact' of experience, such as 'black' or 'large', 
and the suggestion which it furnishes, such as 'will warm me' or 
'will cook food', is the meaning of the 'fact'. Or, again, 'hot' or 
'cooking apparatus' is that which gives the suggestion, and is, 
therefore, the 'fact', while 'black' or 'large' or both are the 
' meaning', i. e., that which is suggested. Meaning, then, may 
well be called a 'cue to conduct'. 43 And now it becomes clear 
why 'meaning' can not be abstracted from 'black' or 'large' or 
any other thing; a function can not be performed — hence there 
can be no meaning — unless there is something to perform the 
function. 

43 W. C. Bagley, Educational Values, p. 34. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AS A FUNCTION 33 

The problematic situation shows the relation between fact 
and meaning most clearly. 'Scratching', i. e., the annoyance 
which makes necessary a readjustment of responses, is the 'fact', 
while 'mouse-to-be-avoided,' the next step suggested, is the 
'meaning'. But meaning when in the guise of an immediate 
quality of things is not different in kind from meaning as it 
appears in the problematic situation. Both are instances of the 
making of a readjustment. The chief difference between them 
is that the former is a momentary while the latter is a prolonged 
readjustment. And other instances where nothing which resem- 
bles a cue to conduct seems to be involved also prove, on analysis, 
to be reducible to the question of the guidance of the body. 
The writer, for example, heard a bell tolling the other day and 
afterwards learned that it 'meant' the death of the mayor of 
the town. At the time that she heard the bell she did not think 
of this person being dead, and yet we should say that it was the 
mayor's death which the tolling 'meant.' This is to say that 
his death, under the circumstances, would have been a correct 
cue to follow. In other words, it is a hypothetical case of 
guidance. 

Woodbridge is correct, then, in calling consciousness 
'meaning' and that, too, without imposing any qualifications 
upon 'meaning', for in every case meaning furnishes guidance 
for conduct, the function which is identical with consciousness. 
In neglecting to use behavior to interpret meaning, however, he 
commits a serious error. Only from the point of view of func- 
tionalism can it be made clear that consciousness and meaning 
are identical. 



VI 
CONCLUSION 

Functionalism, then, if the analyses of the preceding pages 
are correct, deals with the problem of consciousness in a more 
acceptable manner than any of the other doctrines which have 
been presented in this dissertation. With it as a clue, let us 
return to the puzzles which attend the other conceptions of con- 
sciousness and see if the way to their solution is not now open. 

First, let us consider the psychologists' discussions. The 
physicist and the psychologist do, indeed, study the same ob- 
jects ; the difference between the two investigators is a difference 
in the interests which prompt their respective undertakings, 
just as Titchener has said. But what the difference in interests 
is the functionalist has no difficulty in making clear. The differ- 
ence is fundamentally the difference between 'fact' and ' mean- 
ing.' The psychologist is interested in qualities such as heat, 
motion, size, etc., in so far as they serve to bring about a readjust- 
ment, whereas the physicist ignores this function. Heat, for 
example, involves air-waves, sense-orga^ns, etc., and is, so far 
forth, the proper concern of the physical sciences. But when 
heat functions as a meaning, as the rallying-point for a new 
adjustment, it becomes subject-matter for psychology. The sub- 
ject-matter of psychology may, then, be stated as "experience 
taken. in its dependent aspect", which is equivalent to "experi- 
ence taken as organically related to the body." 

The 'double aspect' view also is found to harbor a certain 
truth. Its protest that the mind-body relation is neither paral- 
lelism nor interactionism is justified. What is needed, however, 
is something that goes beyond a protest. A brand-new concept 
is required to express the relation between mind and body, and 
this the 'double aspect' doctrine fails to give us. The concept 
which fills that need is that of bodily control or the relation of 
'stimulus-response'. As was stated a moment ago, the physical 
sciences and psychology are interested in the same things, but 
with reference to different problems or ends. To say that any- 
thing has a meaning is to say that it performs a specific function 

34 



CONCLUSION 35 

or that it is a stimulus. As long as this function is ignored we 
remain on the level of plain cause and effect, and the differentia 
of conscious behavior escapes our notice. It is only by empha- 
sizing the concept of 'stimulus-response' that we can give proper 
recognition to the distinctive trait of conscious behavior. As was 
set forth in the preceding pages, conscious behavior constitutes 
a response-to-a-stimulus, rather than a cause-and-effect series. 
The seen candle, by the future which it reflects, excites reaching 
and grasping, as well as adjustment of the eyes, and it persists 
in its character of stimulus, instead of dropping out as the 'A* 
of the causal series, gaining by the future which its changes re- 
veal more and more of a purchase upon the body. In the case 
of 'conscious' behavior, as one of the functionalists has de- 
scribed it, "the pull is from before," i. e., consequences are pres- 
ent stimuli, while in the case of other forms of behavior "the 
push is from behind." 

It appears, then, that non-mechanical behavior is the fact 
which furnishes the psychologist with a distinctive subject-mat- 
ter. The reason why an introspective report is illuminating is 
not that it acquaints us with the psychic constituents of our 
experiences, for it turns out that introspection is nothing other 
than inspection. The inspection has to do with conditions that 
determine the unique form of bodily behavior which experience 
involves — such as the conditions determining memory, associa- 
tion, volition, etc. — and these conditions obviously fall outside 
the given experience which is being reported upon. And this 
view of introspection also makes the introspectionist 's work 
something quite different from a weak imitation of the drama- 
tist's or the novelist's, the character which Titchener's account 
seems to give it. It is rather an analysis of a problem with 
which no artist and no other scientist deals. 44 

When we turn to James's discussion functionalism again 
brings order out of confusion. Consciousness is on the wing and 
hence must be distinguished from things, for the latter seem to 
stand still ; but the ' fringe ', which we judge to be another name 
for 'consciousness', is a part of the objects cognized; however, 
consciousness, the 'passing Thought', is not experienced until 
after it has had its day — this, it will be recalled, is James's 
account of consciousness, from which one readily draws the con- 

44 Cf. B. H. Bode, "The Method of Introspection," Journal of Philoso- 
phy, Psychology and Sc. Methods, Vol. X, 1913, pp. 85-91 ; also Bode, 
"Psychology as a Science of Behavior," Psychological Review, Vol. XXI, 
1914, PP. 46-61. 



36 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

elusion that consciousness is a puzzle. From the point of view 
of functionalism, however, these three propositions concerning 
consciousness are not incompatible. For most of our purposes 
things do stand still, but if we make an exhaustive study of 
things we discover that they also have the character of fluxing, 
changing. With reference to the control which objects exercise 
over the body they are continually in a state of transition. Their 
present qualities reach out to future ones. The 'dazzling' candle 
is a candle about to be 'reached for' or 'grasped'. Conscious- 
ness, then, may be likened to a stream or fringe and at the same 
time it must be insisted that it is a 'part of the objects 
cognized,' for it is nothing more or less than a function which 
things perform. 

That it is with reference to what things do in the way of 
guiding the body from present to future that things ma} r be 
said to be 'fringed', to form a 'continuum', to be a 'stream', is 
a doctrine which James himself suggests in discussing the physio- 
logical side of experience. The following passages from ''The 
Stream of Thought" brings out this fact very clearly: "Ever 
some tracts are waning in tension, some waxing, whilst others 
actively discharge. The states of tension have as positive an 
influence as any in determining the total condition, and in decid- 
ing what the psychosis shall be. All we know of sub-maximal 
nerve-irritation, and of the summation of apparently ineffective 
stimuli, tends to show that no changes in the brain are physio- 
logically ineffective, and that presumably none are bare of psy- 
chological result. But as the brain-tension shifts from one rela- 
tive state of equilibrium to another, like the gyrations of a 
kaleidoscope, now rapid and now slow, is it likely that its faith- 
ful psychic concomitant is heavier-footed than itself, and that 
it cannot match each one of the organ's irridations by a shifting 
iridescence of its own?" 

But when he approached the question from the side of the 
'faithful psychic concomitant,' James fell into the error of sup- 
posing that there was a 'stream' of another kind also, namely, a 
'subjective' stream which is quite separate and distinct from 
'discrete and discontinuous' things. However, he seemed un- 
able to hold consciousness down to a 'subjective' stream, as we 
have noticed. Again and again, as his discussion proceeds, con- 
sciousness and things seem to be identical. 

Finally, when he reached the discussion of the self, he felt 
the need of still another 'stream'. Hence the 'passing Thought', 
that which does the knowing but is not itself known, is intro- 



CONCLUSION 37 

duced. As James presents it, it plays the part of a mystery 
rather than an explanation. But suppose we interpret the * pass- 
ing Thought' as the name for a function which things perform 
by virtue of which they become 'known' or 'in consciousness'. 
Then we can understand how it can be asserted that the knower 
is known only after it has finished its knowing; to be at one 
and the same time the function and that which performs the 
function, obviously, is impossible. 

It seems, then, not too much to say that James at times 
approached very near to the position of functionalism. In fact, 
the suggestions which his account furnished were sufficient to 
form the foundation of that doctrine. But he attempted to be 
faithful to an older doctrine, namely, a mind-matter dualism, at 
the same time that he was making overtures to functionalism. 
Hence the confusion in his account of consciousness. 

So much is to be noticed regarding functionalism as an 
illumination of the psychologists' conception of consciousness. 
What its bearing is upon the philosophers' has been indicated, 
in part, in the preceding pages. The realists fail to furnish the 
distinctive trait of things 'in consciousness.' This is due to the 
fact that they leave out of account the nature of the stimulus 
which consciousness involves. Attention to the stimulus brings 
to light the fact that it is the performance of the function of 
guiding the body with reference to the future which marks off 
things 'in consciousness' from things 'out of consciousness.' 

Things 'in consciousness' do in a certain sense form a group 
or aggregation. The stimulus of conscious behavior is composed 
of things past as well as present, and of things attended from 
as well as things attended to — all of which things are grouped 
around some specific end or purpose. My experience at this 
moment, for example, controls a group of responses with refer- 
ence to the end or aim of finishing this dissertation. Responses 
to written words, paper, pen, and also responses to all of the 
dead past which is associated with these objects; responses to 
the 'value of functionalism,' but also responses to the weariness 
of a warm day and to the annoying hammering and sawing 
which is going on at a neighboring house, now being remod- 
eled — all of these responses and many more, this moment's expe- 
rience calls out. And all of these responses it also controls under 
the working of one unified system. Responses to hammer and 
saw and to the oppressive heat of the day are checked, attended 
from, while inclinations which have to do with stating my ideas 
in written words are given the right of way. 



38 SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

But if the conscious relational complex is grouped upon the 
principle of purposiveness and is composed of objects of 
the kind described, it is obvious that bodily behavior alone will 
not serve as a clue to its discovery. Acquaintance with the 
unique quale of a given experience is necessary for the interpreta- 
tion of the 'aggregation' of objects which the responses of the 
body indicate. If I should put into words the quale of my 
present experience, it would run in some such manner as this: 
"deeply interested in functionalism, but worn to a thread by 
the heat and the noise." And this information is necessary, if 
one wishes to determine what objects are selected by my shoul- 
ders being bent over my desk and my left hand being clapped 
over one ear, to mention two of the responses of my body. One 
might watch this specific behavior of my body with all possible 
care without being able to find out whether I was conscious of 
any objects at all. And most improbable is it that from merely 
watching this behavior one would discover that * functionalism ' 
was among the objects 'selected' in this setting of hammering 
and heat. 

Things cooperate with the body when knowing occurs. It 
is this fact that the realists have overlooked. But unless this is 
taken into account it is futile to attempt to describe conscious- 
ness. If it is granted that things control the behavior of the 
body with reference to an end or aim, then the assertion that 
the responses of the body 'select' the objects which compose the 
'conscious-relational complex' is meaningful. But if one insists 
upon confining oneself to the body in describing consciousness, 
one can say merely that the body responds to certain stimuli, 
such as air- waves and ether- waves. 

By the light that it furnishes for seeing into the problems 
which other theories of consciousness raise, funtionalism, then, 
gives evidence of being a sound doctrine. What its bearings are 
in other matters the writer will not attempt to discuss. In the 
field of morality its acceptance would unquestionably result in 
innovations of great consequence. The 'self of functionalism, 
in contrast with the sequestered entity which has so long held 
sway in ethical doctrine, is, in a sense, nothing more or less 
than the wide, wide world. It is a summary of the ends or aims 
which the environment holds out to a given nervous system. 
And the motive to action, according to functionalism, is, then, 
the satisfaction of interests, rather than the satisfaction of a 
sacred, isolated 'soul' or 'spirit'; the doctrine of 'selfishness', 



CONCLUSION 39 

far from being the necessary conclusion of ethical theory, has 
no logic whatsoever to support it. 

Again, the problem of the freedom of the will, in the hands 
of functionalism, takes on a new color. Conscious behavior, 
according to this doctrine, is, as we have observed, entirely dif- 
ferent from a mechanical process. The propositions, one's ideas 
determine one's conduct, and one's ideas do not determine one's 
conduct, then, are both meaningless, for they remain on the plane 
of mechanism. Both statements rest upon the assumption that 
there is a causal connection between ideas and conduct; whereas 
the relation between them is really that of ' stimulus-and-re- 
sponse', i. e., a relation which can be explained only if future 
consequences as well as present facts are taken into account. 
The question of 'freedom,' then, seems to be founded on a 
misconception. 

Equally significant is the bearing of functionalism on the 
question of truth. Truth is an attribute of things. It is based 
upon the fact that things furnish cues to conduct. If the cues 
prove to be good, i. e., if they lead to what they have promised, 
the things are true, while, if they are found to fail in their 
promises, they are false. In a word, the doctrine that teaches 
that truth is a matter of 'good leading' goes hand in hand with 
the doctrine which asserts that things do the knowing. 



VITA. 

The writer was born September 12, 1884, in Pueblo, Colo- 
rado. She was graduated from the Pueblo High School in 1903, 
from Northwestern University, with the A. B. degree, in 1907. 
During the years 1909-1911 she was a fellow in Philosophy at 
the University of Wisconsin, receiving the A. M. degree in 1910. 
During the first semester of the year 1911-1912 she was a fellow 
in Philosophy at the University of Illinois, where she was ap- 
pointed assistant in Philosophy in February, 1912. In 1913 she 
was appointed to an instructorship in Philosophy at the Univer- 
sity of Illinois. At the University of Wisconsin she had courses 
with Professor E. B. McGilvary, Professor F. C. Sharp and Pro- 
fessor M. C. Otto, and at the University of Illinois with Pro- 
fessor A. H. Daniels and Professor B. H. Bode. 



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